The actors became friends while shooting the Oscar-nominated baseball film, based on a real-life story, and Pitt has now helped Hill line up his next acting job in True Story, a big screen adaptation of Finkel's memoir.

The Oscar nominee will portray Finkel, who was fired from the publication in 2002 after he was found to have made up an account in an investigative article about child labourers in Africa.

Days later, in a strange twist, fugitive murder suspect Christian Longo was arrested in Mexico, where he had been living under Finkel's identity. Longo gave the disgraced writer a chance to redeem himself when he named Finkel as the only journalist he was willing to tell his story to in a bid to prove his innocence.